The California Gull 
If you would cultivate gull society, fee the galley for a loaf of bread 
and smuggle it up surreptitiously to the hurricane deck, well aft. Now 
for some fun! The hungry horde weaves to and tro, forward and back, 
up and down and around, mewing expectantly like a litter of kittens at 
milking time. Hold up a piece of bread and the pace becomes furious. 
“Please! please! please!’’ they cry, until their mandibles fairly quiver with 
eagerness. But none snatches it from your hand; they are too well dis¬ 
ciplined in the treacherous ways of men for that. When at last the bit 
is flung—instant silence. Every gray bolt is launched at the falling bread 
and the water where it must pause. Crash! And the clamor bursts out 
afresh, for the luckless many must voice their disappointment while the 
lucky one gulps down the prize and hurries back for more. 
Gulls do not ordinarily dive, for they are light as corks. They 
snatch their food rather from the surface of the water. If there is 
plenty, as when the cook dumps the 
accumulated leavings from the cap¬ 
tain’s table, the gulls settle grace¬ 
fully upon the water and throw the 
morsels down by rapidly succeeding 
jets of the head. 
The more experienced birds learn 
to catch bread on the wing, and the 
disclosure of such ability guarantees 
its owner a full meal. It is no small 
trick to catch a bit of flying bread in 
the teeth of the wind, for it is some¬ 
times a nice fraction of a second be¬ 
tween the bestowing hand and the 
bird’s beak. 
Long before the bread gives out, 
you have been seized afresh with 
wonder at the mystery of that gliding 
flight. Graceful, effortless, untiring, 
but above all mysterious, is that pow¬ 
er of propulsion by which the bird 
moves forward into the teeth of the gale,— indeed, is advanced all the 
more certainly and freely when the wind is strong. From the deck of a 
steamer making fifteen miles an hour against a fifteen knot breeze, I 
once stretched my hand toward a soaring gull. He lay suspended in 
midair without the flutter of a feather, while the air rushed past him at 
the rate of thirty miles an hour; and he maintained the same relative 
position to my hand, at five or six feet, for about a minute. When he tired 
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